Apples & Bananas Dominate But Too Many Children Get Fruit From Juice

It seems there’s a good reason the vowel-changing children’s song focuses on apples and bananas — those two fruits dominate children’s fruit intake in a new study. (Sorry — the ear worm’s been running through my head since I read the study, so it’s seeped in.) The good news from today’s Pediatrics study is that U.S. children are eating about 1.25 cups of fruit a day — the recommendation is 1-2 cups a day — and that just over half of it is from whole fruit.

But that’s where the good news ends, unfortunately.

“It’s simultaneously horrifying and not at all shocking that a full third of all ‘fruit’ being consumed by children is in juice form, a number that leaps to 40.9% in the under 5 crowd,” said Yoni Freedhoff, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, about the study’s findings. “Juice is not sating and lacks the fiber and nutrition of whole fruits. Juice is primarily water with a great deal of free sugar and hence is more fairly compared with soda, than the fruit it once came from.”

Indeed, after whole fruit, juice makes up the next biggest proportion of kids’ fruit intake. While 53% of kids’ fruit intake comes from whole fruit, a third of it comes from 100% fruit juices. The other 14% comes from mixed fruit dishes, including fruit drinks. But that’s across all age groups and races/ethnicities. The percentages move around a bit from one demographic group to the next.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: Forbes